Shoulders

Quickly cruising by the historic Sally Barber Mine:

"Hi mine, bye mine!" say the fast trotting trio.
Apparently I was the only one interested in slowing to view the mine :)

It was an interesting day out on the Sally Barber Mine Trail. To start the day, we had to climb over a large snow wall to get from the road and onto the trail. My pals got up & over the wall just fine, but I had to put one ski over and then stop, kneel and slowly put the next ski over. Well, it was a stop, so you know what Jack did...

"We stop, I roll! Powder Angel!!!!" demonstrates goofy Jack rolling a massive angel in the
deep side powder while I crawl up & over the snow wall.
"You almost ready back there?" asks happy Zorro.
"Are you sure I am the goofy youngster? Look at Jack!!!!" declares patient little Rudy!

Over the wall and snow angels complete, time to take to the trail. Well, we came upon another interesting situation for the day. We have had so much snow in March that "ski only" trails are extremely narrow (humans do not like to break trail, so everyone is using any existing track and not widening the trails). I did not think it would be a problem because Sally Barber is such a popular trail that I assumed the set trail would be 3 Siberians wide. Well, I was wrong. As you see in the following photo, every time we tried to use the set track, all 3 could not fit:

Zorro & Jack fit, but Rudy does not as you see Rudy kicking up powder on the shoulder of
the set track holding Zorro & Jack.

The problem with all 3 unable to fit with the addition of deep snow on the shoulders is that whoever is "out of track" cannot keep pace with the 2 in track. It is not fair to ask one of the trio to try and keep pace in the deep shoulders. So, what did we do? Well, we abandoned the set track and made our own trail all day long. Zorro, Jack & Rudy will happily set the trail if it means all three can run in sync!

Forget the set track, we'll make our own!
Zorro, Jack & Rudy setting a new track in the deeper shoulders.
You can see my left ski floating over the snow while my right ski is buried in the
deeper snow behind Rudy.

A fun, albeit interesting & creative, day on the trails. Time to celebrate the end of another fun day:

"It was snow, so we had a BLAST!" say the focused trio.

We only had time for a short run today and we had to get creative on the terrain. The result, a shorter than usual outing: 4.7 miles traveled with 500 feet of elevation climbed and a modest top speed of 17 MPH.

2018/2019 Season to Date: 80 days on the trails covering 436.4 miles with 39,200 feet of elevation climbed.